Plan envisions Renton-to-Snohomish hiking/biking trail

Announcement surprises dinner train owner

RENTON -- A proposal to turn 47 miles of railway into a hiking and biking route from Renton all the way to Snohomish would add an important link to a growing trail system.

But Spirit of Washington Dinner Train owner Eric Temple said yesterday that he was caught "flat footed" by news of King County Executive Ron Sims' plan.

"Which is surprising," Temple said. "You'd think the higher-ups in King County would give me a call if they're going to eliminate 80 jobs."

The stretch of track in question runs from Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park in Renton north along Lake Washington to Bellevue, Kirkland and Woodinville.

King County would deal with the track's owner, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, for a stretch of track that extends all the way to the city of Snohomish in Snohomish County, where the right of way already turns into a trail to the city of Lake Stevens.

That Burlington Northern Santa Fe wants to sell the old route is no secret. The railway offered it to the state Department of Transportation two years ago, but the state rejected that offer. There was talk at the time of using it for light rail, or maybe monorail, but no one stepped forward.

If a rails-to-trails sale to King County is negotiated and a trail is built, Sims said, it would create a north-south route all the way north to Skagit County and contribute to the improving system of local hiking and biking trails that now surround lakes Washington and Sammamish and are being developed in Snohomish County.

Any deal between the county and Burlington Northern Santa Fe would fall under the federal Rails to Trails Act, passed by Congress as a way to preserve rail corridors for possible future use.

Seattle's Burke-Gilman Trail and, more recently, the East Lake Sammamish Trail are examples.

The deal Sims contemplates would be much like the one he struck with Burlington Northern Santa Fe a decade ago for the 12-mile rail strip along the eastern shore of Lake Sammamish. That one went sour almost from the start when some of the neighbors sued.

It took a federal court ruling earlier this year to spring that project free of litigation. Sims announced only last week that work would finally start on its final seven miles.

Then he found himself skewered by dinner train employees.

The protest yesterday caught him by surprise, he said.

Temple and about two dozen of his employees, most carrying signs that read, "Save the Train," showed up at Coulon Park to heckle Sims at an afternoon news conference.

"Save the train," they chanted as Sims tried to speak.

Temple finally told his employees to pipe down, and Sims continued.

He said Burlington Northern Santa Fe, if determined to sell, has just two options: Sell to private individuals or corporations, in which case the property would be divided and lost to public use, or, sell to a public entity -- King County, for example.

"They want assurances we can't guarantee at this point," he said. "But I can say that without us, it is highly unlikely that the dinner train will survive."

Sims said his office and the railroad have been dickering for the past six months about how to get the process started and only late last week agreed that the county would get the exclusive first shot.

He would not offer a ballpark range of possible prices, saying only that he does not negotiate in public.

Later, he put it another way: The only way to save this rail right-of-way as a future corridor for any kind of use will be through public ownership.

But that didn't register with those carrying signs.

"All I wanted was a straight answer, and I didn't get one," Temple said. "I wanted to hear him say:'The dinner train is important to King County.' And he wouldn't say it."

Sims said later he spoke to Temple after the news conference.

He said he told Temple that he couldn't have revealed the negotiations to him because that might have been seen as tampering with a company that leases tracks from the railroad.

Temple nevertheless insists that he should have been contacted somehow before Sims made his announcement.

"Not that I disagree with what (Sims) said," Temple said, "but this is our livelihood, and it's important for us to know what King County has in mind."

Moved from Yakima to Renton in 1992, the dinner train has created about $140 million in tourist business for the region thus far, "so it's no small deal," he said. "We're a big part of this community." The dinner train uses the railway every day but Monday, and twice a day on weekends.

Temple handed out a flier that said his company also had made $750,000 in charitable donations, put in $1.5 million in property enhancements at the train's South Fourth Street terminal in Renton, and thus far has served 1.2 million customers.

He acknowledged that he and his brother, Steve Temple of Yakima, only have "several years" left on their lease from Burlington Northern, then said, "if it works out that a trail and a dinner train aren't compatible, I guess we would either have to move the train somewhere else in the country or, we'd have to sell it off and that would be it."

For a time after the Temple family acquired the old Washington Central Railroad in 1986, the two Temples -- sons of a former grocery chain owner from California -- ran a freight operation, but soon added dinner excursions through the Yakima River canyon to Ellensburg and back.

The section of rail used by Temple's company follows a route along Lake Washington into Bellevue where it crosses over Interstate 90 and 405. Atop the gangly, 102-foot high Wilburton Trestle the train pauses just long enough to worry anyone who looks down.

From there it chugs through the industrial areas of Bellevue and Kirkland before dropping into the upper Sammamish Valley to reach its destination among Woodinville's wineries.